


At Naive Hands

by ambivalentlangst



Series: Into His Fold [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Angst, Death Threats, Emotional Trauma, Gen, Infinity War Compliant, Manipulation, Murder, Tony and May Heavily Referenced, Torture, Use of Infinity Stones and Gauntlet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-28
Updated: 2018-06-28
Packaged: 2019-05-29 17:41:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15078311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambivalentlangst/pseuds/ambivalentlangst
Summary: Peter has known since returning from ash that he is to be more than a child should ever be. It makes staring at Thanos' throne no easier, and the armor crumbles under his agony regardless.





	At Naive Hands

**Author's Note:**

> You guys really are amazing. This series started out as a little thing I played with to dip my toes into writing for Marvel, and the reception provided for that experiment is touching and lovely in a manner I can't begin to describe. Thank you for the continued support for this series, and though I hope you enjoy this part as much as the others, it is, in my opinion, _far_ darker. Please take care and examine the tags carefully before electing to continue.

Peter hated the way Thanos’ throne looked. He hated the way he appeared as he took his seat, the gauntlet at his side. He stared down at Peter calmly, eyes wisened with truths he’d spun into conviction for himself. Peter felt so small, knees all but knocking together as he shook.

 

He remembered Mr. Stark choking on thin air though, how his face purpled and his hero could do absolutely nothing to stop it, so the task fell to Peter.

 

_ “Please, I’ll do anything! You can’t kill him!” _

 

_ Thanos had only smiled in response. Peter worked harder for his attention, rather than his amusement. _

 

_ “I’ll go with you, do whatever you want, and I won’t fight it. You won’t have to use the stones, promise!” _

 

_ A quirked brow, then. Peter sunk his teeth into the tiny bit of something that had to be everything he needed. “Just let him live. Let him have a chance to go back to the survivors, please. He can’t die.” _

 

_ Peter remembered sobbing, sobbing while Thanos drew his thumb across his cheek and drew him closer. He remembered shining the metal of his armor with his tears and whispering to him for the first time the words that made his stomach churn. “I’ll be the son you wanted, father. Just let him live.” _

 

Thanos reached out.

 

“Come to my side, Peter.” Peter moved forward on his own, though he didn’t doubt that Thanos would’ve made him if he hadn’t. He’d promised him, and he wasn’t foolish enough to think that just because Tony was back on Earth, he was safe. He’d kept him out of harm’s way for the time being, and that thought kept him moving forward.

 

Peter felt his hand land on his shoulder as the throne room shifted before him, blurring until Thanos could remain seated before an equally grim expanse, very little marring its rocky exterior save for a few columns erected on either side.

 

“Tell me what you see, child,” he urged calmly. Peter wasn’t sure what the right answer was supposed to be. 

 

He hadn’t known anything since leaping out of the bus to fight the first of the aliens, and he shivered. He’d remained cold ever since he’d been brought back from the edge of infinity, his being knitted together and undulating all in the same paradoxical breath that never even passed Peter’s lips. “A field,” he admitted after a frightful moment of deliberation. Thanos shook his head. 

 

Part of Peter wondered if similar ignorance would eventually earn punishment. In the meantime, he was grateful to be okay. 

 

Peter remembered the blue woman who had tried to cleave Thanos in two with her long, glimmering blades, and the failure burning painfully in Tony’s eyes the last time Peter had seen him.

 

Physically, he was okay.

 

“Not quite. Allow me to help.” Peter saw one of his fingers twitch, and very suddenly there was a something like a man on the field, looking angry as the chains crudely encircling his wrists evaporated into thin air. The space around him pulsed with red light.

 

“He cannot hear us, see us. Not yet. Imagine yourself across from him, my child, and what do you see?” Peter swallowed at the title. Thanos liked the word, and Peter didn’t want to know why. The ghost of a name teased him, and the sound of the space man’s fist slamming itself into Thanos’ face was too present in his ears.

 

_ Gamora. _

 

Peter wondered what she would’ve said, but all he had was his own mind to draw from. “A fight,” Peter whispered. 

 

Thanos chuckled not so very far from his ear. Peter flinched. It hadn’t been so bad on Earth when there was adrenaline and fresh fear to keep his focus on more important matters. Of course, everything had been simpler when the sky was blue and the grass was soft on his skin. Now there was nothing but the cavern they stood in and the man and Thanos’ rumbling voice that was too loud, inescapably so. 

 

“Now you’re getting the idea.”

 

The red woven into the air around the man dissipated, and his eyes narrowed. Peter watched the way he bared his spiraling rows of fangs at the two of them. 

 

Thanos raised a hand, obviously keeping him still in doing so if the way Peter’s foe stared at his muscled arms in alarm was any indication. “Stay. I haven’t explained the rules.” Peter swallowed thickly, his throat dry and palms sweaty. He could hear the man’s heart beat from across the room, and did his best to ignore it as he looked to Thanos. He had been attempting to soften the fear in his eyes into something that resembled fondness, but he didn’t think he was doing very well.

 

“Peter, I want you to battle him and win. Consider it a sort of test run. You will never rule anything as I want you to if you can’t beat a simple mercenary.” The word bounced around the confines of Peter’s head like it was a pinball machine, and he watched the claws on the tips of the man’s fingers flex in the air. Thanos fixed the man with a stare. “As for your reward,” he motioned to Peter flippantly, “kill my son, and you’ll gain your freedom. I will arrange transport for you back to what remains of your planet.” 

 

Peter’s stomach turned. “Than—”

 

_ No. Not if he wanted Tony to stay alive. _

 

“Father, please, if I promise to fight as hard as I can regardless, can’t he go home anyway once we’re done? Back to his family? I’m sure you have a purpose for him here,” Peter didn’t even know where  _ here  _ was, “but, really, I can do it now that I’m with you.” Thanos’ eyes gleamed with mirth. Peter felt like he’d somehow missed the punchline to a joke. Thanos’ throne remained solid beneath him, and Peter thought of old emperors looking upon gladiator fights, simple bystanders to the blood drowning both fighters while they swirled their chalices of wine stained the same color.

 

“As you wish, Peter.” It was a small victory, but Peter was pleased. It wasn’t small to the stranger at his front, who he faced with trepidation. He didn’t want to fight anybody, but Peter wasn’t willing to test his luck any further. 

 

He had no suit and no webs, no A.I. to tell him that he’d gone too far or bot deployed to save him if things got too rough. Peter stood on his own and only barely dodged the first blow the man sent his way. He hadn’t expected him to be so fast, but there he was with his claws inches away from ripping him open. Peter had never fought someone like this, no weapons and no tricks, only stamina and grit spurring them both on. He braced himself for impact.

 

He ducked out of reach of another hit with the assistance of a small tingling at the base of his spine and grabbed the man’s wrist to flip him hard onto his back. Peter could hear the way his breath left his lungs, saw his fangs sink into his lips on impact as they parted in surprise. He pulled back, waiting for Thanos to say he could stop.

 

He’d done it, defeated the enemy set before him at Thanos’ beckoning. His opponent could go home now, and Peter would worry nonethless about Tony when he went to bed but he would rest easier knowing one man could be with his family. His brown eyes came to rest on Thanos’ idle form. The smile he wore had Peter feeling something ice cold wash over him, all but freezing him in place as he stretched his own lips into a poor, nervous mimicry of the same expression. “Father?”

 

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the alien rising in fits of coughing and hacking, stumbling back into a fighting stance.

 

“Didn’t you promise me you would fight as hard as you can, Peter?” Peter was confused. He’d done that, hadn’t he?

 

“I did, father.” Thanos clenched his fist, and Peter shrieked as the same light from before all but consumed him, sending him to his knees. He’d always had bad days with his senses ever since things had changed, since the fever that had wracked his body cleared to make room for things nobody, and certainly not Peter, should be able to do. This was like all his bad days shoved into a single instant of agony, branded onto his eyes while he pressed the heels of his palms into their sockets and begged in a wordless screech for it to end.

 

The light cleared to a dampness on Peter’s cheeks while Thanos looked on placidly.

 

“Next time it will be Stark. I don’t want to hear your lies, I know very well what you can do when you’re not holding back.” Peter tried not to sob in his helplessness as he stared at Thanos. There couldn’t possibly be anything like that in real life, not without blinding him. 

 

He saw the mind stone twinkle almost innocently from where it was nested, along with the rest of the gauntlet, on the arm of the throne. As Peter tried to calm himself and process how the torture thrust upon him had even been possible he struggled to understand what Thanos meant. It took a moment of thinking before he remembered that the same hands that got cats down from trees and held someone’s groceries had caught buses and lifted buildings. “Father, I can’t. I’ll kill him.”

 

Peter had never, not once, unleashed the full brunt of his strength on anything organic. He knew better, even when his own life was at stake. Vaguely, he wondered how the man hadn’t attacked him by now, but when he glanced at him he saw color in the air keeping him still. 

 

Thanos looked amused. “I did promise that he could see his family again, Peter.” The implications of that were a tidal wave on Peter’s conscience, drowning him in an unforgiving rush of water that burned every orifice while it slammed him into the seabed. 

 

He saw the man gearing up to attack again, and Peter tried to back away. “No! Father, please!” He felt his legs stop in their frantic backpedal, and the man was advancing even so. Peter couldn’t find the capability to force back the tears that coursed down his cheeks as he used every ounce of the strength Thanos wanted to see on extricating himself from the grasp of the stones.

 

“It’s you or him. Only one walks away.” Peter fought harder.

 

_ Come on, Spider-Man. Come on, Spider-Man. _

 

He could call Thanos father. He could stand leaving Tony in a broken suit to find the other Avengers. He could handle Thanos’ hands in his hair and wiping his tears. Peter could not kill.

 

One of his earliest memories, faint though it was, was letting the family dog bowl him over onto the tile of the kitchen instead of shoving him away. His mother had inspected the resultant welt on the back of his head for days to be sure it healed right, telling him that he had scared her.

 

Peter had cried, then. He didn’t want to scare his mom. She had been quick to reassure him that it was okay, a little scare was worth having such a kind son, and Peter was quickly consoled with the feeling of her pressing a million kisses all over his cheeks while he giggled.

 

The man was close enough for Peter to see the fine lines of grime encrusted in his face, claws flashing wickedly. Peter closed his eyes, waiting for talons to cut across his throat and spray his life all over the ground. He hoped Tony got to tell May what happened, and that he wouldn’t spend too much time searching for him.

 

The end he envisioned never came.

 

Peter’s eyes opened with a force that was certainly nothing he had created. The mercenary was back where he’d started. Peter’s mind supplied the reminder that time was subject to Thanos’ whim too. Thanos sounded pleased when he remedied his original words.

  
“My final chance to you, my child. Show me what you can do, or I truly will be the only family left to you.”

 

Peter froze.

 

_ “I feel like that’s on me.” _

 

Peter tried to think reasonably. He wouldn’t. Peter had done everything, given everything to make sure they were safe—Thanos couldn’t take that away now.

 

_ “You have to tell me what’s going on.” _

 

Lies. It was all lies he told himself in those precious few seconds that separated Peter from his permanent reminder of just how capable he was of sending a man back home the only way he could. Thanos would do anything he deemed necessary to bring forth Peter’s compliance.

 

_ Smiles shared between mentor and protege as they tinkered in the lab. _

 

The man was fast, gaining ground while Peter remained fixed in place.

 

_ Lotioned hands smoothing his hair back and kissing his forehead as he went off to school. _

 

It wasn’t hard to stay in his spot now, and Peter felt better when he wasn’t fighting the stones.

 

_ A blade turned against its maker on a planet unfathomably far from anything they knew. _

 

Peter wished for the millionth time that he was still just another piece of dust dancing in the dim light of the room.

 

_ An offer made on a grassy field, to make things easier. _

 

The worst part was that it wasn’t even hard.

 

Peter felt the tickle of his spine and reached out, evading flying claws and fangs to allow his palms to brush a neck that was too smooth to be human. He’d seen it in movies he sat through with Ned, eating popcorn while heads rolled. It hadn’t bothered him then. Peter wondered what Ned would think of him if they ever saw each other again, and Peter was unable to stare at the reflection of himself on the screen. 

 

Peter heard the crack of bone, tunneling through flesh and then into his hands, up his arms and into the core of Peter’s being. The alien fell to the floor, and Peter stayed standing.

 

There was only ever going to be one victor, but Peter had hoped, had been stupid and naive and dumb enough to imagine that they could both walk away.

 

The first steps he took in fleeing were almost polite in nature, as though the creature’s existence freshly spilled on the ground was roadkill he’d happened upon unexpectedly.

 

The next few were shakier, faster, the footfalls of someone backed into an alley on a night with no moon to light a path to safety.

 

The last? Terrified, and they brought Peter to Thanos because there was nothing else to save him from the snap of a neck that split Peter into a thousand different pieces along with it. There was nothing but him and Peter, who flung himself into Thanos’ chest and dented his armor when he clung.

 

There wasn’t enough air _ — _ he was rising into the cosmos again but there was no Tony to tell him that he’d catch him, only an unforgiving fall that would chew him up and wouldn’t even bother spitting him back out. The metal crumpled like butter under his fingertips from the strength Peter had always prevented himself from unleashing before. The sound Peter made was hardly human, a wail erupting from within him in the form of a scream that was a sob that was so much more than should ever be known to a boy of fifteen.

 

Thanos allowed him to stay, carding his fingers gently through Peter’s hair.

 

“It’s always hardest the first time, my child. You’ve done well today.”

 

He’d done it for May and for Tony because they were all Peter had, but they weren’t even there with him. There was only armor that cradled him in its golden clutches. Peter knew nothing but it and the  _ crack  _ and Thanos, the father that was the only thing Peter could hold to know someone could handle his shattered pieces.

 

Nothing but a monster could possibly warp the mercenary and his fangs and fury into a pale mass on the floor. Nothing but a monster could howl like he was in a cry beyond words. Nothing but a monster would find any comfort in the grasp of another one that wore the gauntlet.

 

Thanos’ words washed over him and Peter knew he was a monster that could not possibly face tomorrow.

 

Thanos disagreed. After all, things would never get easier for Peter without practice.


End file.
